NAH: Light as Fuck

Light as Fuck is by far the strongest release yet from Philly-based experimental musician NAH. He’s just deleted his past 4 years of music on Bandcamp to make way for what appears to be a new and glorious future of beat-making and vibes.

The album begins with a disorienting-yet-pleasant burst of ambient sound interrupted by percussive thumps and a vocal sample (of his own voice) which will soon come to define this 25-minute chunk of sound for all listeners: “I COULD FUCK YOU UP IF I WANTED TO, I COULD TEAR YOU DOWN IF I WANTED TO / IF I WANTED TO.” Aggressive, harsh, and edgy vocals have been a feature of NAH’s music for as long as I can remember – the aggression/groove combo is pretty idiosyncratic at this point. The first two tracks are pretty chaotic and vocals are sparse; the third, “Get/Take/Have,” is somewhat more involved with vocal sampling (lots of looping, incomprehensible tones) and sounds pretty trap-influenced. Check out the video for it, too:

I won’t go too much further into detail, but I do want to say that NAH’s handling of vocal samples and different feels has become masterful. It’s really wonderful to hear him play with genre and texture like he does – I look forward to collecting hours and hours’ worth of his music to use as DJ material for only the most fucked-up parties. NAH has really outdone himself on this album – it’s got the most variety and the most listenability out of anything else I’ve heard from him. It’s challenging, but also rewards the listener for sticking it out. Just what I needed.

You can keep up with NAH on social media and stream his other stuff (nahstuff dot bandcamp dot com) on his now-much-less-full bandcamp.

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